1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a touch electrode device, and more particularly to a touch electrode device having electrodes made up of non-transparent conductive material.
2. Description of Related Art
A touch screen is an input/output device that adopts sensing technology and display technology, and has been widely employed in electronic devices such as portable or hand-held electronic devices.
A capacitor-based touch panel is a commonly used touch panel that utilizes capacitive coupling effect to detect touch position. Specifically, capacitance corresponding to the touch position changes and is thus detected, when a finger touches a surface of the touch panel.
FIG. 1 shows a cross-sectional view of a conventional touch panel. Specifically, the first electrode layer 11 and the second electrode layer 12 are formed on a top surface of a substrate 10 in sequence. The first electrode layer 11 has a first electrode column 11A and a first film 11B, and the second electrode layer 12 has a second electrode column 12A and a second film 12B. Specifically, the first electrode column 11A and the second electrode column 12A are respectively disposed on bottom surfaces of the first film 11B and the second film 12B. Moreover, the first electrode layer 11 and the second electrode layer 12 are fixed to each other by the optical cement 15. As shown in FIG. 1, the first film 11B is fixed to the second electrode column 12A by the optical cement 15. Moreover, the decorative film 13 is formed on a top surface of the second electrode layer 12, and the cover glass 14 is disposed on a top surface of the decorative film 13.
The first electrode column 11A and the second electrode column 12A of the conventional touch panel as discussed above are commonly made up of transparent conductive material such as indium tin oxide (ITO). As the ITO is formed by using a complex process and the thickness of each ITO electrode layer is usually between about 100 μm and about 150 μm, so it may cause to increase the overall thickness and result in poor yield for the decorative film. Consequently, it is difficult to reduce the production costs of the touch panel.
For the reason that the conventional touch panel requires complex manufacturing process and cannot afford to make a thin touch panel, a need has thus arisen to propose a novel touch electrode device to overcome disadvantages of the conventional touch panel.